Artist uncovers Davaar island’s historic cave painting
The latest interpretation of Davaar Island’s unique crucifixion cave artwork includes a loin cloth styled after Diego Velázquez. At a Kintyre Antiquarian and Natural History meeting last month, former grammar school art teacher Ronald Togneri, who has inherited the role of preserving Archibald MacKinnon’s artwork, spoke about the painting’s history from his experience of its continual restoration Opening his talk, Mr Togneri said: ‘I am heavily indebted to others who have ploughed this furrow before me. ‘I can add some subjective opinion and bring the story up-to-date perhaps by talking about the post-MacKinnon years. ‘I am indebted to sources like Angus MacVicar’s Salt in my Porridge and Angus Martin’s Kintyre the Hidden Past. ‘Probably the soundest work is Murdo MacDonald’s in The Kintyre Magazine, issue 65, spring 2009, a magisterial study of the subject. ‘It is remarkable that in a population of 7,000 people, Campbeltown between 1819 and 1865, produced five artists all of whom, with the exception of MacKinnon, found considerable eminence.’ These included William McTaggart, 1835 to 1910. ‘McTaggart supported the young MacKinnon in his Campbeltown ventures.
Narrative
‘Like McTaggart, Mackinnon’s earlier work was in a narrative style, genre painting, always with a characteristic vein of humour bubbling up through it. ‘His work was often labelled naive but the naivety is perhaps in its technical proficiency not in the thought processes behind his work. ‘MacKinnon worked in Campbeltown for a scant three years. He had returned from Glasgow where, apprenticed as an engineer, he had studied art at Glasgow School of Art at night classes. ‘MacKinnon’s early years in Glasgow saw him finding quite a degree of success. ‘He exhibited at the RSA, Glasgow Institute and there is a watercolour, called Tirfergus Glen, which he submitted to the Glasgow Institute. ‘His Campbeltown Fair, from 1886 is, to my mind, his masterpiece, the finest thing he ever did. ‘It was exhibited that year in the Edinburgh international exhibition of science, industry, technology and art.’ Mr Togneri said that the work clearly owed much to genre paintings by an earlier artist, David Wilkie, whose genre paintings looked back 100 or more years as did Mackinnon’s of the fair. Mr Togneri said the painting’s flowing crowd of figures showing humour is held together by the architecture. He added that MacKinnon marketed images of the painting as a way to make money and of his painting Hogmanay in Campbeltown. These paintings were donated to Campbeltown Museum anonymously in 1904. Mr Togneri added: ‘MacKinnon’s mother had been widowed quite young and poverty had driven him to Glasgow. ‘Eventually she found work and must have bettered her financial position quite a bit because Archibald decided he was going to be a professional artist. ‘That’s how he was going to make his living having trained as an engineer. He came back to Campbeltown to pursue that, things were going well for him making a living as an artist. ‘But, in August 1887, he took a crucial life-changing decision and that was when he surreptitiously crossed the Dhorlin and embarked on his cave painting.
Response
‘He did this he said, in response to a dream, he saw the painting in a dream in a cave. ‘He later said he had never been on Davaar Island before and I find both of those statements a wee bit hard to accept. ‘Even though MacKinnon painted that in Glasgow, I
think he must have been sketching and drawing in Kill-dalloig Bay and I am sure he would have been on Davaar.’ Comparing religious works by McTaggart to MacKinnon’s Crucifixion in the cave, Mr Togneri said: ‘It was full-on in your face, quite shocking.
Gothic vaulting
‘Looking at it now in its setting, if you walk round towards the cave, the columnar basalt faulting soaring up immediately suggests Gothic vaulting, it is like a cathedral. ‘It seems an appropriate site for a religious work. ‘It looks as though it belongs, it looks as if it has grown out of the rock. Although we only have monochrome photographs of it, possibly retouched, you can see that Archibald MacKinnon’s figure has a strength and a vigour. ‘It also links to perhaps the more modern work of someone like Georges Rouault, in that simplified, stylised figure of heavy outlines, sombre colouring and dark tonality. ‘These qualities are what caused offence to people eventually.’ Mr Togneri added that one of the paintings of the day was Golgotha by Mihály Munkácsy and in 1887 it was exhibited in Glasgow. ‘It was a cause célèbre, everyone knew about it,’ said Mr Togneri. People flocked to the cave and Mr Togneri said one report told of an Episcopalian minister, who had been seen going backwards and forwards, but that he had been dead for some years. ‘Art students and journalists came in increasing numbers, between 4,000 and 5,000 by the end of the first week. ‘A local wag told a journalist, as he queued in line to view the cave: “Beware of Campbeltown, one half of the lies told in it are not true and the others most certainly doubtful”. ‘The next edition of the Campbeltown Courier revealed that Archibald MacKinnon had come forward with photographic proof of himself as the artist.